Episode 198 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 07
Date: 10/25/23
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3435-episode-198-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-07/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 198 continues the reading of Cicero’s On Ends Book Two, with Cassius opening by connecting this episode to the preceding interview with Dr. Marcelo Boeri (Episode 197) — noting that Dr. Boeri and his co-author demonstrated how Cicero deliberately omits major Epicurean doctrines on justice, security, and friendship. The central discussion is prompted by a forum post from Callistheni asking how the Epicurean equation of “absence of pain” with “the height of pleasure” can be reconciled with ordinary experience. Cassius frames it with a jury box analogy: would twelve Romans sitting comfortably in court agree they are experiencing “the height of pleasure”? Callistheni suggests the answer requires philosophical contemplation — parallel to understanding “death is nothing to us” — and Cassius supports this with citations to Usener 68, Principal Doctrines 18 and 19. The episode expands to cover Cicero’s page 37 critique demanding Torquatus define the nature of pleasure; Plutarch’s Against Colotes and his essay on the “live unknown” maxim; Erasmus’s dialogue The Epicurean (arguing only Christians are true Epicureans, because “Epicurus” means “Helper” and Christ is the true Helper); and a passage from Matthew Stewart’s Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic describing how Epicurus alone among the ancient philosophers could not be “wrestled to the ground and marked with the sign of the cross.” Martin is absent, traveling in Göttingen, Germany, visiting a museum with statues of Epicurus and Metrodorus.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 198 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean text and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.
We’re recording this on Sunday, October 22nd, and we’re a little bit off of our normal procedures here, because the last time we were in Cicero’s On Ends Book Two was Episode 196. Episode 197, which is going to come out before Episode 198 does, is a special interview with Dr. Marcelo Boeri from Chile, who has just released a book, along with a co-author, on Epicurean political theory and engagement with society. In that interview, if you hear it before you hear this episode, there are some interesting things from Dr. Boeri that apply to what we’re talking about here. In Dr. Boeri’s book, they spend a lot of time looking at what Cicero had to say — specifically in this very Book Two that we’re discussing now. Dr. Boeri and his co-author, Dr. [Javier], make the point that Cicero is omitting major parts of Epicurean philosophy in what he is writing. They point out that Cicero obviously had before him the Principal Doctrines and other writings of the Epicureans and of Epicurus. And yet, even though he is focused on criticizing Epicurean philosophy, he does not talk about large parts of the Epicurean doctrines that are applicable to justice, security, or friendship — all of which lend themselves to an understanding of how an Epicurean does engage in society, does interact with his government, and how all of these support structures are necessary to the security of an Epicurean.
The point most relevant to where we are today is that they show how, in Cicero’s criticisms, he very selectively quotes from Epicurus’s work and does not include many important matters necessary to give full body to what’s being said — which is exactly what we are running into now. Dr. Boeri does mention Epicurus’s views on pleasure, and how Epicurus’s view of pleasure — just as we’re talking about — was much wider than what Cicero allows Torquatus to explain in full.
So now that the interview with Dr. Boeri is complete, we’re back to our discussion of On Ends Book Two. Rather than do what we did last week and quote several passages that sort of summarize where we are, I think we have a post on the forum from Callistheni — just this morning — that gives us an opportunity to reflect on what might be the heart of the question. Because we’ve been discussing how Torquatus is insisting that pleasure is the absence of pain, and that they are identical concepts. In Principal Doctrine 3, the first sentence says the limit of pleasure is the absence of pain, and the second sentence says that where pain is, there is no pleasure, and where pleasure is, there is no pain — they are mutually exclusive. When you combine that with the position that there are only two feelings, and as Torquatus says, if you’re feeling anything at all you’re feeling either pleasure or pain, you arrive at the conclusion that the full experience of pleasure can be described as the absence of pain.
Cicero is making a big deal about this. As DeWitt points out, Cicero attacks by saying that Epicurus is talking about two different things — that absence of pain is different from pleasure — and that Hieronymus of Rhodes understood fully that absence of pain is different, making absence of pain his goal of life while having nothing good to say about pleasure in relation to that goal. So Cicero is attacking relentlessly on the point that Torquatus, that Epicurus, is being unreasonable in using the single word “pleasure” to apply to what appear to be two very different topics.
Getting back to the post that Callistheni made this morning, I came up with this analogy. If you were Cicero pleading this case to a jury and you had twelve average Romans in front of you and asked them a series of questions, I think it could go like this. Cicero might ask those twelve jurors: “Jurors, are you in pain sitting here this morning, getting ready to listen to this case?” And presuming they’re sitting in comfortable accommodations, they would probably shake their heads indicating no. Then Cicero says: “Well, if you listen to Epicurus, then if you’re not in pain, you must be in pleasure. In fact, since you’ve told me you’re in no pain, you, gentlemen of the jury, are in the height of pleasure. How many of you agree that sitting there right now listening to me in the jury box, you are experiencing the height of pleasure?” And I think we can imagine what the response to that would be. I don’t know that very many of those jurors would agree that sitting in the jury box listening to Cicero is an example of the height of pleasure. And frankly, I don’t know that many of us on EpicureanFriends.com — and that’s the reason Callistheni posted the question — would categorize their daily experiences of life, where they’re not in pain, as pleasure.
So if that’s the case, and if a normal jury of reasonable Romans in 50 BC would have rejected that idea, how do we reconcile it? Are we going to think that Cicero is misrepresenting Epicurus, and that Torquatus’s statements are misrepresenting Epicurus? Or is there another way of looking at it that allows us to understand how both perspectives can be held together? Callistheni suggested a way of reconciling those in her post today. Callistheni, can you explain that?
Callistheni: Well, I was thinking that this could be a situation that requires mental application — mental reasoning. It’s parallel to how we think about “death is nothing to us.” It takes a lot of contemplation to understand what that really means. And so likewise, this is also something that takes some contemplation. It’s not automatically evident, and it does not even make sense in some ways. But if you think about it for some time, you see it’s basically a type of remedy for helping life become more pleasant — just in the same way that we contemplate “death is nothing to us.” It’s not simply something that you repeat over and over and just believe. It actually takes some time to reason through it.
Cassius: I think you’re definitely off in the right direction. Another analogy I might suggest: we all understand how memories can be pleasant. Well, those memories are present in our brains all the time, and yet we’re not always thinking about them. We’re not always deriving pleasure from their being there unless we’re thinking about them. So I think that might be another example.
And whether my examples are any good or not, I do think there are several passages we can quote that support this disposition you’re talking about. First, Usener 68, which comes from Plutarch’s essay That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible, Moralia 1089d, where Plutarch says: “It is this, I believe, that has driven them, seeing for themselves the absurdities to which they are reduced, to take refuge in the painlessness and the stable condition of the flesh. Supposing that the pleasurable life is found in thinking of this state as about to occur in people or as being achieved, for the stable and subtle condition of the flesh and the trustworthy expectation of this condition, they say, contains” — and here’s the important part — “the highest and most assured delight for men who are able to reflect.” Now, DeWitt translates that as: “The stable condition of well-being in the flesh and the confident hope of its continuance means the most exquisite and infallible of joys for those who are capable of figuring the problem out.” So you’ve got it recorded here that thinking about these conditions in this way is not only pleasurable, but very pleasurable for those who are able to figure the problem out and to think about it.
I would also cite Principal Doctrine 18: “The pleasure in the flesh is not increased when once the pain due to want is removed, but is only varied. And the limit as regards pleasure in the mind is begotten by the reasoned understanding of these very pleasures and of the emotions akin to them, which used to cause the greatest fear to the mind.” So there’s a reference to reasoned understanding being key to the appreciation of those pleasures.
And then Principal Doctrine 19: “Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures by reason the limits of pleasure.”
It does appear, then, that the gentlemen of the jury who listen to Cicero and deny that they are in pleasure are expressing perfectly normal everyday attitudes — of people whose philosophical positions have not been enlightened by Epicurean viewpoints. But those same jurors, if they were Epicureans, if they did understand the reasoning behind this, if they realized that they’re not in pain while sitting there — they are in pleasure by being alive. And when you think about these things, when you reflect on them in the context of your life being short and death being long and eternal when you’re no longer here, it’s possible — as Torquatus said earlier — that the wise man is always going to have more reason for joy than for vexation.
You can also reconcile Epicurus’s statements about the man under torture: the man who is experiencing strong physical pain is still capable of summoning memories that make life worth living, and the expectation of hopefully getting out of torture and resuming normal life. Those mental experiences are pleasure occurring alongside the physical pain — just as, again, with Epicurus in his last days, they can be used to offset physical pain. But that’s going to be possible only for the type of person who is able to figure the problem out. If you’re a Platonist, or the glass-half-empty type who sees the negative in life and is, as Epicurus says, the type of small person who has many reasons for giving up his life, then you’re not going to have the same experience of pleasure in your memories and in your appreciation of simple good health that you can have with the right orientation.
So I think that gives us a basis for assessing what we’ve been reading. But I’ve been droning on a while. Callistheni, is what I said somewhat consistent with your thoughts? And of course, Joshua, please weigh in as well.
Joshua: Yes — and all those quotes you gave were very helpful. What we’ve been talking about, mostly in the last few minutes, is the necessity to think about these things and to appreciate the perspective in order to generate that pleasure. If you don’t think about it from this perspective, you probably won’t experience that feeling of pleasure. So going back to the analogy of the jurors: from one perspective, they’re right to agree with Cicero. From another perspective, they’re wrong, because they’re not appreciating what the true nature of the situation is — meaning that it’s not instinctive to recognize that absence of pain is pleasure. You’ve actually got to think about it.
Cassius, I think those are all very good points. Cicero says here on the bottom of page 37: “You, Torquatus, declare pleasure to be the supreme good. You have therefore to unfold the nature of pleasure.” I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thing to ask. “For otherwise,” says Cicero, “the object of the inquiry cannot be made clear.” And then he goes on to make a point which I think goes too far. He says: “And if he had made it clear, he would not be in such difficulties. He would either defend the kind of pleasure adopted by Aristippus — to wit, that whereby sense is sweetly and agreeably agitated, which even beasts would call pleasure if they had power to talk — or else if he decided to speak after a fashion of his own, rather than as all men of Argos and Mycenae and the Attic youth to boot” — he’s quoting some other ancient source there — “and the rest of the Greeks who are summoned in these lines, he would describe this absence of pain alone by the term of pleasure and would disregard the pleasure of Aristippus, or again, if he accepted both kinds, as he does, he would combine freedom from pain with pleasure and adopt two kinds of ultimate good.”
So Cicero has clearly got his opinions on this, but he makes some very good points. We have to understand, if you’re going to argue this stuff, you have to understand the nature of pleasure. And as you’ve been saying, Cassius, several notorious authors throughout the ages have taken up this question — Plutarch being one of them. He said that Epicurus makes the pleasant life impossible. There was a Renaissance figure — and I think it was Erasmus, although I can’t find the information on that right now — who was also trying to combine Epicurean ethics with Christianity, which is a very common theme throughout the Renaissance. But he goes one step further and says that it is only Christians who can truly be called Epicureans, because it is only Christians who are choosing the ultimate eternal pleasure of heaven by enduring whatever they have to endure on earth to get to that point. So they are truly choosing pleasure over everything else — but in a way that the Epicureans would not understand, because for them, death is nothing. So it’s absolutely essential that we take up some of these points. I don’t think it’s true that Epicurus makes the pleasant life impossible, which is Plutarch’s central thesis. And I don’t think it’s true that only Christians are truly Epicureans.
In the case of someone like Erasmus of Rotterdam, who is combining elements of Epicureanism with Christianity, it’s notable in part because he was part of a circle that included Thomas More.
Cassius: I’ve talked at length about Thomas More in the past on this podcast — how he was reading Amerigo Vespucci, who said that the way of life of the Native Americans was Epicurean, and how in his Utopia he had taken Epicurean philosophy as something like the ethical structure of that ideal society. But in all of these cases, they want to rip the heart out of Epicureanism. It seems like Cicero has a slightly different approach. He wants Epicurus to talk himself in circles until everybody in the room can see how absurd he is. That’s kind of Cicero’s goal here — to show Epicureanism for the absurdity that it is. So that’s the challenge laid before us today and in this entire series.
So in a few simple words, why was it that Plutarch says Epicurus makes the pleasant life impossible? Why did he say that?
Joshua: Plutarch is responding to Colotes, who had previously said that it was impossible to live a happy life without being an Epicurean. And I think that Erasmus is picking up on the same thread of argument. Here’s something interesting, Cassius — especially in light of what I haven’t heard yet, which is the conversation between you and Fernando and Dr. Boeri regarding the Epicurean approach to politics and public involvement in general. One of the sections of Plutarch’s Moralia is called Whether “Live Unknown” Is a Wise Precept. He wrote: “He who uttered this precept certainly did not wish to live unknown, for he uttered it to let all the world know he was a superior thinker and to get to himself unjust glory by exhorting others to shun glory.” In other words, Epicurus is selfishly trying to raise himself up by convincing others to pull themselves down.
Cassius: Yes, Dr. Boeri points out that that essay is the main source for this allegation that Epicurus taught “live unknown.” And yet the point they bring out in the book is that Plutarch gives absolutely no citation whatsoever for where Epicurus said it or where any of the Epicureans said it. While there are doctrines you can read as going in the direction of security coming from isolation from crowds and divorcing yourself from the whims of the mob, there is no straight statement of “live unknown” in any true core Epicurean text. Plutarch — as Dr. Boeri pointed out — is an out-and-out Platonist. He’s not only anti-Epicurean, he’s also anti-Stoic, and he takes the Stoics to task almost as much as he takes Epicurus to task. So Plutarch in particular is a very, very hostile opponent of Epicurus. It would probably be hard to decide who was more hostile, Plutarch or Cicero. But I gather from Dr. Boeri’s discussion that Plutarch is actually more apt to misrepresent Epicurus than Cicero would be.
Joshua: Colotes, a student of Epicurus, became famous for an essay claiming that it was impossible to live according to the precepts of non-Epicurean philosophers. While the essay itself has not survived, we do have a response written by Plutarch — a first-century AD follower of Plato. His work, Adversus Colotum, or Against Colotes, concludes with an argument against the Epicurean preference for private relationships and agreements over participation in public affairs and non-consensual legislation, summed up by the well-known Epicurean slogan “live inconspicuously.” Hence: “Like some offender against heaven, he — Epicurus — publicly proclaims his own misdeeds when he says, as near the end of the book: ‘The men who appointed laws and usages and established the government of cities by kings and magistrates, brought human life into a state of great security and peace and delivered it from turmoil. But if anyone takes all that away, we shall live a life of brutes and anyone who chances upon another will all but devour him.’”
“For this is Colotes’s public declaration in his own words, and it is dishonest and untrue. No praise accordingly can ever do justice to the men who dealt with these brutish feelings of pleasure by establishing laws and with them states and governments and a system of legislation. But who are the men that nullify these things? Overthrowing the state and utterly abolishing the laws? Is it not those who withdraw themselves and their disciples from participation in the state? Is it not those who say that the crown of an untroubled spirit is a prize beyond all comparison with a success in some great command? Is it not those who say that to be a king is a fault and a mistake? Who write in these very words, ‘We must proceed to tell how a person will best uphold the purpose of his nature and how of his own free will he is not to present himself for public office at all.’ They even go further and to these sentiments they add the following: ‘So we are not called upon to be saviors of the Greeks or to receive from them any crown for wisdom, but to eat and drink, my dear Timocrates, in a way that will do the flesh no hurt and gratify it.’”
Cassius: That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? The pursuit of pleasure as the goal of philosophy is presented as a threat to everyone else in the polis — the city-state. You’ve shown yourself to be unreliable. “We can’t call upon you in times of need because you are a hedonistic coward” — essentially that’s the argument being made.
And Joshua, I think we could also answer Callistheni’s question. I’m looking at the very last paragraph. What you’ve just read is Plutarch’s version of the slanderous accusations of what Epicureans are arguing. But as far as specifically the question of how it’s not possible to live a happy life, here’s what Plutarch says at the very end:
“But if it be true, as Epicurus thinks it is, that most men die in very acute pain, then is the fear of death in all respects inconsolable. And yet they, the Epicureans, are never wearied with their brawling and dunning of all persons to take the escape of evil for good. But they still confess what we have asserted, that death hath in it nothing of either good, hope, or solace, but that all that is complacent and good is then wholly extinguished — at which time those men look for many amiable great and divine things that conceive the minds of men to be unperishable and immortal, or at least to go about in certain long revolutions of time, being one while upon the earth and another while in heaven, until they’re at last dissolved with the universe, and then together with the sun and moon, sublime into an intellective fire. So large a field and one of so great pleasures, Epicurus wholly cuts off when he destroys the hope and the graces that we should derive from the gods, and by that extinguishes both in our speculative capacity the desire of knowledge, and in our active life the love of glory, and confines and abases our nature to a poor narrow thing — and that not cleanly either. To wit, the content of the mind receives by the body as if it were capable of no higher good than the escape from evil.”
As I’m reading that, I’m not sure it’s coming across very clearly even if you read the paragraph directly. But it’s clear that what he’s arguing is that by saying there is no immortal soul, Epicurus is cutting off everyone from those “amiable great and divine things” that come to those men who believe in the gods — who believe that eventually they’ll either rotate from planet to planet, or eventually together with the sun and moon be sublimed into an “intellective fire,” which sounds rather Stoic. “So large a field and one of so great pleasures Epicurus wholly cuts off.” So I think in the end that’s going to be ultimately one of his arguments: that the Epicurean view of death takes away the great pleasures you will have if you work with the gods and humor them and they reward you with the type of pleasures that religion offers to those who follow its rules.
And that takes us back — both Joshua and Callistheni raised this issue — to “death is nothing to us.” Callistheni, I do think that’s a very good analogy for what we’re talking about, because “death is nothing to us” is one of those phrases — almost like “pleasure is the absence of pain” — where you really have to think about what’s being said. If I were to know that this afternoon I’m going to be dying in a house fire, suffocated by smoke, that certainly is something to me and I’m going to do everything I can to avoid it. So in that perspective, death is definitely something to us. But if you’re talking about death as the state in which you’re existing — or not existing — after you die, then absolutely, after you die you’re gone, you no longer exist, and whatever goes on after you die is nothing to you from that perspective. This has come up a lot in our discussions: “death is nothing to us” sounds like a ridiculous thing to say if you’re talking about how you die, because if you die a painful death, pain is definitely something to you — but the state you arrive at or fail to arrive at after you die is in fact nothing to you, and that’s very clearly understandable and brings about a lot of comfort when you know you’re not going to be tortured in hell for eternity.
You’ve got many significant examples like that of phrasing: “the sun is the size it appears to be” is one we’ve had some enjoyment talking about over the last couple of months. Epicurus appears to have been fond of these challenging statements that require you to think about the answer and understand where it comes from — from the atomist perspective on the nature of the universe. And then when you do understand these things, what formerly looked like a puzzle or a paradox or just some ridiculous thing to say becomes absolutely true, and a source of great pleasure, comfort, and enjoyment — in realizing that you’re not subject to the fears and anxieties of those people who don’t understand the problem.
Joshua: That’s a very good point, Cassius, and Callistheni, thank you for asking the question — that’s a document we need to spend more time with. I did find, meanwhile, on the forum a reference to this dialogue by Erasmus that I mentioned earlier, called The Epicurean, and I quoted from it in May of 2020 — so we can get that in as well now. I suppose I don’t even remember writing it, which is quite intense. Yeah, the first sentence I use, Cassius, is “Rome is a crime scene” — this is the feeling that was building in me by degrees as I was led from one crumbling monument to another, to the Forum late in ruins, to the Colosseum quarried for stone or stripped of marble to make lime, and so forth — anyway, that’s me talking. This is Erasmus:
“If they are Epicureans that live pleasantly, none are more truly Epicureans than those that live holily and religiously. And if we are taken with names, no body more deserves the name of an Epicurean than that adorable prince of Christian philosophers. For ‘Epicurus’ in Greek signifies as much as ‘Helper.’ Therefore, when the law of nature was almost erased by vice and the law of Moses rather incited than cured lusts, when the tyrant Satan ruled without control in the world, he alone afforded present help to perishing mankind — so that they are mightily mistaken that foolishly represent Christ as by nature to be a rigid melancholic person and that he invited us to an unpleasant life, when in reality he alone showed the way to the most comfortable life in the world.”
Cassius: Everybody, it seems, throughout history — and this is a point made by Norman DeWitt — wants to claim the ethics of Epicureanism for themselves, with their own particular twist on it. So either by changing the meaning of the word “pleasure” — which is why this relates to Cicero — only Christians are true Epicureans, because they’re basically choosing paradise. And it’s interesting, because this may not have come through while I was reading it, but Erasmus takes Epicurus’s name in Greek, which means “helper,” and says that well, who is the true helper but Jesus Christ, who died for mankind. And that takes us back to an issue we’ve discussed many times: the importance of the physics and the Epicurean view of the universe. Because the logic of what Erasmus is saying could be compelling if the proof and the evidence were there to support his conclusions — that nature in fact operates the way Erasmus says it does, and that we could buy our way to paradise eternally by complying with those views. And that’s where everybody has to make their own decision about what the evidence shows and what is most likely to be correct, and whether it is a good bargain to be a Christian and place your treasure in heaven for eternity — or whether you are, as Paul said, the most pitiable of men if there is no resurrection. It’s a very important question that everybody needs to think about.
Joshua: Martin is not with us today, Cassius — he is in Göttingen, I think, at a museum there which has statues of Epicurus and Metrodorus. There is, of course, the famous — famous because of Cicero — statue of Chrysippus holding his hand out. And you know, we can see a lot of this at work in what we’ve been talking about in these statues. Most of the famous seated statues of Epicurus — Barton said that all of them were found without their heads. Is that right?
Cassius: Yes, he did say that. And I suspect we all know the meaning of that — that they were decapitated by unfriendly art appreciators. And often they were found with different people’s heads attached to the body. I know that was the case for several of them.
Joshua: It’s interesting, because in the Getty Villa in California — which is a reconstruction of the Villa of the Papyri found at Herculaneum, buried under volcanic ash — they have in that villa some busts of Greek figures, I think of Aphrodite or other goddesses, and they were found with a cross incised on the forehead and the eyes gouged out.
So you know, we can read here about Erasmus claiming Epicureanism for Christianity, or we can read from Plutarch that Epicurus makes a pleasant life impossible — and the message is: you need Christianity to live pleasantly. It’s not just a sedate rediscovery of classical philosophy that evolved here. When these works and this philosophy come back in the Renaissance, it’s kind of like a war — a war on two fronts, against the bad pagans as contrasted with the noble pagans. Cicero and Virgil and Plato and Aristotle are noble pagans, and we can draw on their works because they’re not going to lead us into sin. But these other people — these Epicureans — have to be avoided, or they have to be assimilated. It’s the same problem with the statues: a statue of a beautiful Greek goddess has to be, as I think I’ve seen elsewhere stated, wrestled to the ground and marked with a cross. But you can’t do that with Epicurus.
We have that on the forum, don’t we, Cassius? There’s an image and a quote from a book that says basically that Epicurus could not so easily be wrestled to the ground and marked with a cross. So Nate put together an image from May of 2022: “Pre-Christian Philosophers and Pathfinders of the Way.” It has images of Plato, Thucydides, Homer, Apollonius, Solon, Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras — the sort of early, uncontroversial thinkers that laid the groundwork in many ways for Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in their effort to build a single unimpeachable theology for Christianity. Aristotle’s work on substance versus accidents is the foundation of Catholic theology when it comes to the transubstantiation of the bread into the body of Christ and the wine into his blood.
So Nate has that image, and then imposed over it is a quote. The quote comes from a book called Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic, written by Matthew Stewart. It deals with deism at the origin of the American republic. We had a conversation about this, Cassius, separately when I was reading the book — because it goes into detail on a book written by Ethan Allen, which I had no idea about. Ethan Allen wrote a book called Reason: The Only Oracle of Man, which I have not read, but you had read.
Cassius: He famously laid siege to one of those great North American forts — Fort Ticonderoga, I think it was. “Come out, you old rat!” was the famous thing.
Joshua: Anyway, the quote from Matthew Stewart’s book is: “The Epicurean revival was not the first such challenge to the hegemony of the Christian religion over European culture. Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics were pagans too, and in their work they sounded many of the themes that would make the Epicurean philosophy so dangerous, as did a number of the more radical theologians of the late medieval period. One could further complicate the narrative by pointing out that for some of the people some of the time, the Epicurean revolution passed for a renovation of the established religion from within. In Epicurus, however, there was nothing of that compromising dialectical spirit that pervaded Aristotle and the others and allowed them to be wrestled to the ground and marked with the sign of the cross. ‘Among all the ancient obdurate atheists and inveterate enemies of religion, no one seems more sincere and more implacable than Epicurus,’ observed the poet Richard Blackmore.”
That comes from Matthew Stewart’s Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic. The image Nate included there is called “Pre-Christian Philosophers and Pathfinders of the Way,” based on the frescoes at the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos as well as the Monastery of the Transfiguration of Christ in Meteora.
It totally dovetails with everything we’re talking about. I find it interesting that Plutarch is primarily concerned with this phrase λάθε βιώσας — “live unknown” — because again, I haven’t heard it yet, but your conversation with Dr. Boeri is, I gather, largely on that point, and I’m looking forward to hearing that.
Cassius: You know, Joshua, as we begin to close for today, I relate this in my mind to something that comes up when people comment about the statues and busts of Epicurus. The Epicureans apparently said that statues of the gods should be made smiling, so that you can approach them and understand that they pose no threat, pain, or punishment to you. But the statues of Epicurus himself — the busts of Epicurus — are made not smiling and acting like he’s having a good time. They are largely quite severe. Very serious looking, very focused and intent, intense in his presentation. And I think that is a reflection that the Epicureans understood, even in their own time, what you’re talking about — that there is essentially a philosophical war, to a significant degree, between these various positions, as Richard Blackmore is saying. There’s no more inveterate enemy of religion, nobody more sincere and more implacable, than Epicurus. And implacability — not in the sense of detachment or indifference, but sincerity and intensity — is what comes across in these portraits of Epicurus. Yes, pleasure is the ultimate good and the ultimate goal, but it takes a sincere and intense and focused approach to be able to successfully live a life of pleasure and not to be wrestled to the ground by making mistakes in the way you pursue pleasure or understand the way the world works.
So a lot of interesting things. I’m afraid we’ve been rambling in different directions today, but hopefully by the time we reach the final version of the podcast we’ll be able to wrap it all together. But okay, let’s go ahead and take closing statements. Callistheni, any closing thoughts today?
Callistheni: Since we’ve brought up the two ideas — that death is nothing to us, and that the height of pleasure is the absence of pain — I was thinking back again about how it really is a long process and takes some time. In fact, the “death is nothing to us” — there is still more that personally I could consider and think through regarding that. And as far as “the absence of pain is the highest pleasure,” I feel I still need more time to process through that. So this has been an interesting episode. Thank you both, Joshua and Cassius.
Cassius: Callistheni, before I turn it over to Joshua, that reminds me of what Lucretius says over and over again in his poem — that the key to a happy life is not the light of day, not simply looking at what’s out there around you, but a scheme of systematic contemplation, as he says. You can’t just observe — you have to process what you’re observing in order to really get the benefit out of it and to avoid the problems and achieve the successes that you’re capable of in life. I think that’s what you’re talking about, and it’s not easy and it’s not short. It takes significant effort, and various people are going to make progress faster than others. But still, it’s a study well worth undertaking. Joshua?
Joshua: Well, it seems like we’ll have plenty of time, because as I’m looking ahead in Cicero, we didn’t spend much time with Cicero today — but Book Two of On Ends actually ends on page 79, and we’re on about page 37 now. There’s a lot of material here to cover if we’re going to go through it all.
Cassius: I think we probably will, Joshua, because I think what we’re going to find is that Cicero begins to be a little repetitive and we’ll start being able to move a little faster. But these are really, really powerful objections that we’re all familiar with, whether we associate them with Cicero or not. So I think our recent episodes have been some of the best we’ve had in terms of really wrestling with some of these important questions. And I believe whether he intended to do so or not, Mr. Cicero is going to be very helpful to us in improving our own wrestling skills.
Again, Martin is in Germany at this museum with many, many busts and statues. And again, the episode I haven’t listened to yet — which has not come out yet but will come out by the time this is released — is the interview with Dr. Boeri. I’m looking forward to that. Yes, Josh, we’re sorry you were not able to be with us for that episode, but I think everybody will enjoy it, and hopefully we’ll be able to schedule another one with his co-author, Dr. [Javier], and you’ll be able to join us for that. So a lot going on.
Speaking for all of the panel, I very much appreciate everybody who listens and participates on the forum. We’d remind everybody in closing that we do have the forum available and that everyone can participate in these discussions — just come to the thread for this episode or any of the other threads that discuss the topics of interest under Epicurean philosophy, and that’s available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So until next week, thanks for your time today. See you then.